Fruitful: A Real Mother in the Modern World

Product Description

In her passionate new book on modern motherhood, Anne Roiphe breaks the silence among feminists on a subject central to so many women's lives. Viewing three decades of the women's movement through the intimate, deeply compelling story of her own family history, Roiphe makes an eloquent plea for a new agenda. The birth of Roiphe's children coincided with her own emergence as a voice for the women's movement in the 1960's. Since then, through divorce, remarriage, parenting, and stepparenting, she has keenly felt feminism's lack of enthusiasm for issues that touch women's daily lives: the need for quality child care, the need to include men as full partners in parenting, the need for society to accommodate all the turbulent, troubling, joyous experiences known as motherhood. Combining memoir with social commentary and an urgent call to action, Roiphe cuts through the political rhetoric of both the left and conservative right with a healing message for all women torn between their own ambi

Online Review

The passion Anne Roiphe feels for being a mother far outweighs any literary accolades she could achieve for her writing. She believes that if men could only learn the art of mothering, the battle between the sexes, especially in the workplace, might abate. In this humorous, yet critical analysis on what it means to be a mother, Roiphe advocates co-mothering and condemns the women's movement for its male-bashing focus. Fathers who mother, she maintains, are less threatened by their wives' successes outside the home, because the traditional gender roles are shared. Though she is adamant about protecting a woman's right to choose to be a mother, she writes that once a woman has taken that step, she must regard it as sacred and never abandon her responsibility.